The Palmyra Atoll Research Coordination Network aims to unite academic and conservation institutions involved in conducting research at Palmyra Atoll, a remote coral atoll in the Central Pacific. Palmyra offers an ideal setting for studying the functioning of healthy reef ecosystems. Recently, recognition has increased substantially about the degree to which humans, over historical and pre-historical times, have modified the structure of coral reefs as well as most other marine systems. Current management practices urgently need reassessment in the face of global declines in coral reefs and integrative science about the processes governing reef community structure should play a strong role in this reassessment. PARCnet will bring together a broad group of individuals, including governmental and NGO conservation biologists, educators, systems modelers, theoreticians, and coral reef experts to form a network that conducts innovative, interdisciplinary work to improve scientific understanding and conservation of reef and remote tropical island systems. Annual retreats for PARCnet members will provide a general forum for active discussion and collaboration, and an interactive website will provide a centralized resource to store, explore, discuss, and disseminate scientific data to PARCnet members and the broader public. In addition, the Network will actively promote student involvement in PARCnet through financial assistance to attend network meetings and through the organization of PARCnet symposia at other relevant scientific meetings. Through the promotion of synergistic research and collaboration across a diverse range of individuals and career stages, as well as the involvement of major natural history museums and universities, PARCnet will inform both the general public as well as conservation and resource managers about the earth's coral ecosystems. PARCnet's efforts promise to provide exciting new insights into the future trajectory of the world's coral reefs and terrestrial atoll systems as they respond to changes in climate, human usage, and management practices.
The Palmyra Atoll Research Coordination Network (PARCnet) has supported a consortium of institutions including the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH); Scripps Institution of Oceanography; Stanford University; University of California, Santa Barbara; University of Hawai'i; Island Conservation; United States Fish and Wildlife Service; United States Geological Survey; National Institute of Standards and Technology; Victoria University at Wellington; and The Nature Conservancy, all working to conduct integrative research across the physical, chemical, and biological sciences at Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Central Pacific. With NSF support, the Palmyra Atoll Research Consortium (PARC) developed a multifaceted organizational structure, coordinated the research at a remote field station, and developed a comprehensive Master Science Plan that encompasses the research activities of its participants. This plan organized PARC research interests into several ecosystem and thematic components that use Palmyra's unique environment to advance the Consortium and produce globally important science. By coordinating over seven years of synergistic research, PARCnet has contributed to basic knowledge of the terrestrial, marine, and climate systems of Palmyra Atoll and the central Pacific and to advancing the conservation of island and coastal systems worldwide. The findings from this research are significant and far-reaching, and the collaborations facilitating the research are long lasting. Findings from the research have resulted in 106 peer-reviewed publications and dissertations as of April 2014 and have been presented at a minimum of 17 academic symposia and conferences, including the International Congress for Conservation Biology, the Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America, the Ocean Sciences Meeting, and the International Coral Reef Symposium. Through the project's Beginning Investigators Committee, more than 50 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows and 25 undergraduate students have conducted research on Palmyra, resulting in 7 Ph.D. dissertations and 3 MSc dissertations to date. Since 2008, PARC students have published 44 papers in peer-reviewed journals and additional papers have been published in book chapters or non peer-reviewed outlets. Many of these represent cross-PARC collaborations. One such publication, with coauthors from four different PARC members, was published as an open-access article to maximize its broad circulation and was ranked as the top-downloaded article in the journal where it was published (McCauley et al. 2010, DOI 10.1007/s00227-010-1533-2). Beginning investigators also participated in institutional management through PARC leadership and involvement. As part of PARC's Beginning Scientist Exchange Program, five promising young scholars were awarded travel grants to support collaborative research for their professional development. Through their numerous outreach initiatives, PARC researchers have demonstrated commitment to raising public awareness of the function of intact reef systems and to supporting effective decision-making for island and coastal conservation worldwide. The project has developed a public website and a Facebook page. The project's research has been profiled in numerous popular media outlets, including the New York Times and a Spanish language feature by the BBC. The grant supported a capstone symposium held in April 2013 at the AMNH entitled "Understanding Ecological and Social Resilience in Island Systems: Informing Policy and Sharing Lessons for Management." During this symposium and associated activities, participants examined for coastal and marine systems some of the characteristics, qualities, and processes that may foster resilience - the ability of ecological and social systems to absorb, resist, or recover from disturbances and adapt to major change while continuing to maintain critical system functions and benefits. The symposium united PARC members, local resource managers, researchers, educators, island leaders, policy makers and other leading conservation practitioners to present and analyze real-world island resilience case studies. Through sharing lessons learned and fostering networks of island managers that are addressing similar challenges, the symposium deepened manager insight into how to promote the resilience of coastal systems, paving the way for ongoing collaboration in the future. The outputs from symposium activities will contribute to the preparatory process for the Third UN Global Conference for Small Island Developing States in 2014 and to the Island Biodiversity Programme of Work of the Convention on Biological Diversity, as well as to other relevant policy outlets. Building on long-term planning and fundraising coordination for PARC research needs that began in 2011, the Consortium was awarded a grant by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, "Understanding Coral Reef Resilience to Advance Science and Conservation," focused on coral reef health and the challenge of sustaining reef resilience. This new project, called the Reefs Tomorrow Initiative, is a five-year multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional, and multi-site research initiative to answer fundamental research questions about how coral reef resilience is affected by synergistic stressors and apply the findings by launching a new generation of empirically based conservation and management tools. PARC members are working in collaboration with local communities and conservation organizations to develop these decision support tools for conservation managers to use as they plan and manage for resilience in coral reef systems.
